“I have heard nothing, but was so fixed in prayer I may well have missed it. Shall we go together?”
A flutter of white moths landed in the trees above them, causing the dry leaves to crackle with the ascent.
“I have a foreboding”, said Peter.
“As do I.”
In the near distance there were now many noises to be heard, gathering all of a sudden. Many men and carts struggled for a place beside those at the front hacking their way through the forest - felling the medium trees in order that the path be made wider to accommodate their train. Amongst the cargo to be seen were mason’s blocks and carved statuary, robes, foods, candles and ledgers, belts and bobs, and luxurious resins.
“Brothers of poverty … I have authorisation from our most beloved Papa Grace to deliver to you all you might need.”
“I have no such ambition to grow this Community with a likeness to the holdings about. Our work and worth in this world is not measured by numbers - be them building or men. We are but a few whose life is simplified. We have denounced all of the burdens of ownership. Our aspiration need breathe only the vapours of Heaven.”
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
Charley rose to her feet taking his cup. She read him well.
A small lizard appeared to crawl out of Francis’s pocket and slip up his leg and onto the table, only to disappear under the tray.
This morning just keeps getting better, Calvin thought to himself, still trying to get over the images from the H*tler conversation.
“I wish to make you an offer to buy out your company” said Charley’s father matter-of-factly - plain as day - “I’ve come into a little money of late and would like to diversify.”
A little money? Calvin thought to himself. This guy was a joker. Not a bad chemist, with some far-reaching ideas that had proved to be invaluable, but now it seemed he had lost all sense of reality. There had been some talk of dementia …
“Mr Black - there are some portfolios that become available at the next general meeting - shareholders keep it in the family as such - but I am in no mind to part with any of mine. I thank you for your offer.”
He hesitated and then said - “and now if you will excuse me I really have to go … Lab 3 is running some controls I have to oversee …”
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
When Robyn returned with Charley, balancing an enormous rattling tray of glassware that was full of treats, they found the three men to be unusually quiet.
"Who died?" joked Robyn. This was a popular line in the Aussie vernacular.
Francis plucked a pickled onion from the tray and tossed it over to Chips.
Snap! His moistened jaw clamped shut over the missile - he squinted with the taste.
Puck took a breadstick and dangled it under the old dog’s nose.
Snap! Lascivious crunching was to follow.
Calvin winced. He hated to see good food going to waste with the dog being fed like that. He was forgetting entirely how he came to meet Chips in the first place.
He secretly wished that the men would leave and he could have a leisurely morning with girls instead.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
Puck continued: “He had all kinds of body parts ground down and extractions and fluids from babies and virile men, scholars and gymnasts, even the bones of saints - he ate it all, wanting the ‘virtue’ of their life-force as he called it.”
Now he had Calvin’s attention. Francis looked uncomfortable and stroked his beard contemplatively - this subject made him miserable.
“Well how? Where?” asked Calvin flipping open his phone to Google “Hitler Cannibal”.
“In his chocolate,” said Puck blandly, “the human extractions were in his chocolate.”
Calvin just read that the guy ate two pounds a day of the stuff. “Sheesh” he said sitting back, giving a pause for the thought.
“Of course he got absolutely nowhere with all of this, whatever he had hoped. You can’t consume virtue and make it your own like that. But what would a devil know? They get everything back to front.”
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
The girls had gone to organise lunch and the three had become sidetracked into a conversation about Hitler.
“Why does everything have to come back to Hitler?” Calvin asked himself - preferring the company of the women to the two old men in front of him.
Puck wanted his attention - and was trying to impress upon Calvin just how dangerous some human experiments can become.
“The Führer did not eat animal meat because it was his belief that he would take on the properties - the nature of that beast - were he to ingest it. But he was no vegetarian.”
“You just said that he did not eat animals?” said Calvin abruptly.
Charley’s father really bothered him at times, although he was not sure exactly why.
“No, no animals - just people. He ate people.”
If Francis was surprised at this he did not show it. Chips was sitting in between the men, and put his chin up on the table, blinking from one to another, watching on like an obvious spy.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
Hannah-Mary had long been frightened that if she pushed him [Francis] into this very moment he would estrange himself from her, or worse still, send her far away.
Yet, she could not help herself.
“Why cannot we be married?” she said most pleadingly.
“Because I am already married to another” he said unapologetically. And that was that.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
Although she was still connected by a clairvoyant mirror with her brother Murmur, she could also almost read the shining thoughts of Francis. She knew his prayers before he spoke them, she heard the music of his song, and thrilled to the core of her being, just to sit with him in silence.
Why could he not show her the tenderness he most easily gave to the goat?
This was not to say that the elven monk had romantic encounters with the beasts that gathered around him - no, he was not like the herdsmen of the north who the villagers would complain of, saying that their wild children had hairy backs and were born in paddocks, later to be but mute simpletons digging and ploughing for their fathers.
No, Francis did not engage with his animals like the fancies of the Roman courts, whose zoos were salons of iniquity - parlours of coiffured creatures wearing their golden harnesses, brushed and fragranced, feasting on the tables, soiling the marbled floors with the Egyptian servants hastening after them.
No, Francesco had no fetish or inhuman lust - he quietly and simply bore love for everyone, and everything.
- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
